Richmond Region Weather

Hurricane Patricia Leaves Shark in Woman’s Front Yard

This young shark swam into a front yard in Alabama during a flood, but was unable to leave before it was stranded.

It looks like the premise behind Sharknado may not be so outlandish after all. Whitney Constantine of Mobile, Alabama was more than a little surprised after discovering a dead shark in the middle of her front yard earlier this week. According to Constantine and her husband, the shark arrived after heavy rain and flooding caused by remnants of Hurricane Patricia, leaving the area covered in knee-deep water.

As the strongest hurricane to ever hit the Western Hemisphere caused widespread flooding in Mexico, Central America, and southern Texas. Due to its severity however, states as far away as Michigan were impacted as well, with cold howling winds that continued into late this week. Effects of the hurricane were more visible in southern states, where severe thunderstorms and torrential downpours have caused flooding from Louisiana to Florida.

In Constantine’s case, the flood waters receded to leave behind a shark. The homeowner told WALA-TV that she and her husband will most likely bury the animal, which has been identified as a young bull shark.

“You can tell by its size and some of its features. It’s what we call a ‘young of the year’ shark. Its mother probably went somewhere around the entrance to Mobile Bay and had that pup sometime in April or May of this year so that individual fish is about five or six months old,” Marcus Drymon, Professor of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama, told WNEM.

Surprisingly, finding a shark in your backyard is not as rare as many would assume, especially if you live near the coast. In July, a Virginia woman similarly found another young shark near her home. In that case however, the animal was actually dropped from the sky. It was likely that the shark fell from an osprey or a hawk as it flew over the home. Drymon says that coastal neighborhoods occasionally find sharks and other fish stranded after flood waters recede.